Monthly Archives: August 2018

Summer in the Pacaut household means one thing and one thing only, barbecue.

Okay, it also means drinking rosé and micheladas but let’s focus here and get back to the summer grilling going down at our petite maison.

This is a time when we really let our French flag fly. Barbecues typically start with a traditional apéritif and a game of pétanque followed by many a pork product (whether cured or grilled), tons of wine and cheese, and this delicious French potato salad.

It’s funny how the simplest dishes often garner the most attention. This one was our summer darling who got all the compliments and recipe requests.

Now you too can whip up a French potato salad with ingredients from Trader Joe’s and serve it at your next outdoor shindig!

There is a point in the summer when it’s way too hot to turn on the oven or cook anything at all. But thankfully temps are starting to cool down a little over here in Southern California and I’m happy to get back into the kitchen.

Quite fortuitously, my copy of the Cherry Bombe cookbook just showed up in the mail. There are so many dishes calling my name and I’ve bookmarked every other page. I’ll be cooking up a storm over here while you enjoy these links!

Anyone who loves to cook spends a lot of time in the kitchen. And anyone who spends a lot of the time in the kitchen eventually gets overwhelmed by the amount of stuff they have tucked away in various cupboards and drawers.

When I hit this point, I started decluttering like a madwoman and eventually whittled my kitchen stuff down to the absolute essentials. These are the 60 or so things that I use on a regular basis and that add the most value to my adventures in the kitchen.